Pedro González
Journalist
Michelle Bachelet had ever contemplated a regression in the respect for human rights such as the one that is currently taking place in many countries and regions of the world. This is what the UN High Commissioner said at the opening of the 47th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The increasingly intense, extensive and flagrant violations are particularly evident in China, Hong Kong, Russia, Nicaragua, Belarus, Burma and in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, and will be the subject of detailed examination during the debates, which are due to continue until 13 July.
The High Commissioner, who twice held the presidency of the Republic of Chile, said she was particularly disturbed by the violence and abuses in Tigray, where the dissident Tigray People’s Liberation Front has been engaged in a three-month civil war with the central government in Addis Ababa, a conflict that has already claimed more than 50,000 lives, 60,000 refugees in neighbouring Sudan and a heavy toll on the region’s civilian population. “Bachelet said: “There are credible reports that Eritrean soldiers are operating in Tigray and continue to perpetrate violations of human rights and humanitarian law.
Extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and sexual violence, not only against adult women but also against children, paint a frightening picture of what is happening in Ethiopia, where other reports also point to outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence, in a country once again under the ominous shadow of new famines.
China won’t allow anyone to meddle in its affairs
The catalogue of data that seems to endorse this “never-before-seen setback in human rights” places particular emphasis on the cases of China, Russia and Belarus. With regard to China, Bachelet echoes the numerous allegations that at least a million Uighurs, practitioners of the Mohammedan religion, are being forcibly confined in “re-education camps”, subjected to continuous mistreatment and humiliation. These accusations were immediately refuted by the spokesman for the Chinese mission in Geneva, Liu Yuyin, who in a note sent to the media described Bachelet’s statements as “erroneous” and accused her of “interfering in China’s internal affairs”. For the Chinese spokesman, the so-called re-education camps are in fact “vocational training centres”, and invites the High Commissioner to visit China, including the province of Xinjiang, “but not to carry out an investigation based a priori on the presumption of guilt, but rather a friendly mission to promote exchanges and cooperation”.
Nor is the High Commissioner any less concerned about the situation in Hong Kong, where the application of the recent Security Law promoted by Beijing has effectively wiped out the last vestiges of freedom in the former British colony, and where opposition leaders have no alternative but to go to prison or flee into exile if they wish to continue to pursue free thought.
It is the same concern that shakes Bachelet with regard to Russia and Belarus. In Belarus, the increasingly violent crushing of freedoms by Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship is resulting in the progressive cooptation of the civilian population, who are also condemned to forced silence or flight into exile, if they can leave in time before they are arrested and tortured.
As for Russia, the case of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which was also discussed at the last summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, is the most emblematic case of the progressive annihilation of all dissidence. Michelle Bachelet declared herself “dismayed by the measures that prevent any criticism of power and even the possibility of standing in the next elections”. The High Commissioner is referring to the recent ruling by a Moscow court, which after a closed-door trial declared the three organisations through which Alexei Navalny disseminated his reports and proposals for a different way of living in freedom and governing Russia to be “extremist”.
The Russian judiciary has paved the way for any possibility of opposing President Putin’s dictates by labelling both journalists and NGOs as “extremists”, “foreign agents” or “undesirable organisations”, epithets that automatically lead to the seizure of property and work tools, the illegalisation and dismantling of their activities, and the prosecution and imprisonment of those who do not abide by their de facto placing outside the law and Russian society.
The military dictatorship in Myanmar, the crazed Ortega-Murillo satrapy in Nicaragua, the persecution and confiscation of property from opponents in Venezuela, not to mention many other regions in the Americas, Africa and Asia, will no doubt be the subject of what are expected to be heated debates. Their conclusions will probably not immediately change the behaviour of those most directly responsible for this disturbing step backwards in respect for human rights. But at least they will not also enjoy the complicit silence of the rest of the free world and feel at least a little less unpunished.
© All rights reserved
